Dance 'till you Die
by MistyxTuna
Summary: (Quick note, m'dears: I tend to get graphic in my descriptions of blood, which is why I figured it ought to be rated accordingly. bows)


DANCE 'TILL YOU DIE

Chapter One: Porcelain Doll

A teenage girl sat on a bench in the center of the town square. Before her, a single, lone tumbleweed darted across the way, bouncing off the cement foundation of the dry fountain in the center of the town's meeting-place. Self-conciously, the girl smoothed the inky black of her ruffled, old-fashioned skirts. Beside her, on the sand-coated bench, lay an old porcelain doll. The doll was called 'Betty', and she had been the girl's treasure. Betty had sparkling blue eyes, and curly brown hair. Betty had come with her very own pink dress, and she even had two pairs of matching shoes. That was in the past, however. Now, Betty's head was severed from her pitiful body, the glazed eyes staring up into space past the girl's head.

The girl regretted having torn Betty's pretty head off of her soft cloth body. Now, she had to carry around two pieces of her past instead of just one memory, packed into a little porcelain doll. She looked down at Betty for a moment, a thin sheet of cornsilk-blonde hair sliding down to hide her ruby eyes. Betty was watching her.

'Why do you love them?' Betty seemed to say, her head lolling slightly on the park bench.

The girl ran a tiny hand through her flaxen hair, pulling up and out of her face, "I love them because they are Mine, Betty."

Betty, clearly, did not understand this. She remained silent for a time, and then the glazed blue eyes seemed to say, 'I do not understand you, Lilith.'

"Don't try to understand me, my dear friend..." the girl called Lilith replied quietly, smiling down at her beloved doll.

The people strolling aimlessly through the town center cast silent glances at the peculiar, lone girl on the park bench. Was she actually attempting to converse with that pitiful porcelain doll? It was odd enough for such a young thing to be swathed in old-fashioned black clothing at such a ridiculously hot time of day, but to speak to your doll? People hurried about their business, suddenly remembering that something-or-other that just had to get done, or that special somebody who needed tending to. Once more, the square was abandoned, all because of one odd child murmering softly to her only friend.

Betty loved being Lilith's doll. Lilith could be strange at times, occasionally having a panic attack or flying into sudden fits of rage (one of these fits had resulted in Lilith severing Betty's head from her body with a butcher knife), but Betty still loved belonging to Lilith. Betty had been the one to comfort her when Lilith had been lost and alone in the desert, Betty had been there when Lilith was sad and afraid. Betty would always be there, and Lilith knew and was aware of this. It was Fact; pure and simple. To the teenager, life was Betty and Betty was her life.

'Why don't we get something to eat?' Betty suggested, her glazed blue eyes staring into space.

"Good idea, Betty." Lilith replied companiably, sliding off the bench and picking up Betty's head first, then her body.

The little flaxen-haired girl made her way towards the Knuckle n' Foot on the other side of town. The Knuckle n' Foot was a saloon, a saloon notorious for allowing questionable customers to come in. Barry, the saloon-owner, had a motto:

"If you can pay, you can stay."

As far as Barry was concerned, Lilith was worth her weight in gold. The little creature was beautiful and exotic, and attracted a good number of customers with her lovely singing voice, so gentle and high-pitched, dipping and swerving like the thing the legends spoke of called the Ocean. Barry was happy to let the kid eat her fill each night, so long as she agreed to hopping up on stage and charming her audience with her beautiful young voice, and pure innocence. People often forgot she was a teenager, so stunning was this child when performing. Lilith didn't mind, as long as Betty accompanied her. The one night that Barry had attempted to take Betty away was the night Lilith had a Rage.

One of Lilith's Rages could be terrible, and the one that occured that one night was the worst of them all. People left the saloon shrieking, and Barry found his customers trickling away like sand in an hourglass. So, naturally, he gave Betty back to Lilith.

When the child poked her head through the door, Barry was more than pleased to see her. Letting out a roar of welcome, he launched his wobbling-fat body over the bar and thundered over to her, his eyes bloodshot in a way that suggested he had been drinking.

"L-Lilith! Hic-I didn't expect you until S-Satur-HIC!-day. Tonight's stew night, kid," he slurred, his sentence incoherent.

The little blonde looked up at him with her shocking ruby eyes, a big, beautiful smile of affection on her pallid features. Barry was another one of her Humans. Therefore, she loved Barry...in a sense. Betty stared accusingly at Barry with her glazed-over eyes, and Lilith 'Ah-hem'-ed impatiently.

"Oh," Barry hiccuped. "Hi, Betty."

Satisfied, the teen' marched over to the bar and clambered onto one of the leather stools, hooking her bare feet on the cold metal rung to support herself as she leaned forward. Still clutching Betty's body to her, she set the doll's head down on the polished oak counter like some sort of heathen offering.

"Hey, Lil'," said Sal, Barry's wife and the head barkeep. "You want some soup, kiddo?"

Lilith nodded, her hair flopping in front of her eyes once more. Sal shook her head disapprovingly, mentally making a note to trap the kid and force her to sit still long enough for her to cut that flax-like hair of hers. Barry had long since busied himself attempting to flirt with a mischevious-looking redhead; Betty gave him another disapproving stare from her place on the bartop.

When Sal returned with a bowl of greasy stew, she found Lilith to be resting there with her head on her arms. Silently, the heavyset older woman set the food down and left. It was up to the girl to eat, or not to eat. Lilith chose the latter. For some reason, looking across the bar at the flock of scantily-clad prostitutes and women of lesser morals, she felt a great depression settle over her shoulders like a cloak. She buried her head in her arms, not caring that some of her feather-light wisps of platinum hair had drifted into the steaming bowl of soup.

She loved them all, every one of them, and it hurt her to see them so desperate for money. Betty looked at Lilith with her comforting blue-glazed eyes and seemed to say, 'There, there. They made a choice, and they must live with the consequences.'

Lilith nodded agreeably to Betty. She didn't need to remove her head from her arms to know that Betty was watching her still. "What?" she inquired finally, peering at her doll through a few stray wisps of hair.

'Nothing,' Betty seemed to say.

"Don't you lie to me, Betty!" Lilith cried, sitting up swiftly. The few hairs that had gotten soaked in soup stuck to the side of her pallid, sweating cheek. "If I can't trust you, who can I trust!?"

Betty said nothing. The doll deemed it best not to infuriate her mistress more.

"I thought so..." Lilith grumbled, scratching the place that itched on her head.

Sal noticed this, and frowned at the blonde teenager. "Hon', you gonna' eat any of that stew I made for you?"

Lilith felt like pointing out the fact that Sal had not made the soup exclusively for her, but instead obediantly began to slurp some of the greasy liquid out of the corner of the bowl, keeping one eye on the back of the bar. A tall man in a white tuxedo had strolled confidently onto the low stage, and pulled out a glittering brass saxophone. Lilith could sense that Betty's interest was piqued. Eager to make up for her outburst to her friend earlier, Lilith re-arranged Betty's head on the bartop until glazed blue eyes were facing the stage where the man stood.

He then pressed the instrument to his lips, almost kissing it, and began to play. How it wailed! Lilith felt her lips jerk down into a frown. She didn't like the wailing it made, but everyone else was absolutely infatuated with the sound. People swayed their heads to the music, and many of the cheap prostitutes stood in front of the stage, fanning themselves and preening, hoping for a glance in their direction from the saxophone-playing man. Betty was watching her again, Lilith could feel it.

"What is it, Betty?" she asked quietly.

'Saxophone is an acquired sound, I expect,' Betty informed her playmate.

"So the instrument that man is playing is called a 'sazzo-phone'?"

'Sax-oh-phone,' Betty said, clearly enunciating her words. 'Not 'sazzo-phone'.'

Lilith said nothing, because at that moment the man reached the crescendo of his song. The brass instrument simply screeched, letting out a high-pitched groan as the song finished. The applause was thunderous; none of the generally polite clapping one normally recieved. Lilith was puzzled; what was so superb about that man's song? Something primal inside of her felt challenged, and she stood up, the bar stool rattling behind her.

"Lil'?" Sal asked, watching the blonde. Something told her that the teen felt a new emotion. "What's up, kiddo? You want to do your thing, now?"

Sal, by saying 'do your thing', apparently meant, 'would you like to sing now?'. Lilith nodded mutely, which extracted a gasp of surprise from Betty. Betty was watching Lilith once more, her eyes seeming to sparkle with the unseen challenge that was hidden within Lilith's own endless ruby orbs.

'You're going to try to get more applause than that man did, aren't you-' Betty seemed to say, but she was rudely interupted by Sal.

Sal looked at Lilith expectantly. "Lil'?" She said, "I do hope that you're not trying to out-sing Mr. Midvalley's saxophone..."

Lilith watched her with those haunting ruby eyes, allowing the woman to trail off uncertainly. "I ate your stew tonight," the blonde said quietly. "I promised Mr. Barry that I would sing for his audience each night if I came to eat here. It's my way of paying."

And with that, the slender little girl hiked up her velvet black dress and headed towards the temporarily abandoned stage, weaving her way through the masses of people and tables sprinkled across the Knuckle n' Foot's broad main room. She felt the familiar carpet of the stage hit the sole of her bare foot as she stepped onto it; and there was an expectant hush as she stepped to the primitive microphone. The ladies that had been flirting with the man called Midvalley had moved on, rather irritated by the fact that Lilith was preparing to sing; they knew she had a better voice than all of them put together. All the same, the silence began to consume the room as Lilith thought, straining her mind for the words to a song.

Usually, she just allowed the words to flow, but then it occured to her that she had left Betty back on the bartop. Oh, dear! Without Betty, Lilith found her knees knocking, and her voice trembled as she attempted to get the first note out. It was an old song, but a very popular one nontheless. Seeing Betty's porcelain head, resting calmly on the bar across the room, across the sea of swimming faces that was her audience, her eyes finally met the chocolate-brown eyes of the saxophone-man, Midvalley. She sent him her most penetrating glare before beginning. This was war.

The teenager tilted her head back, her ankle-length flaxen hair shifting on her shoulders to cascade down her back like a waterfall of cornsilk. Meeting the gaze of the saxophonist had given her surprising courage, the sort of courage that one only finds when one is truly challenged and is excited by the notion of a worthy competitor. It was Lilith versus that shiny brass saxophone.

Lilith began to sing, and it wasn't the simple lyrics of the song that had the audience staring at the girl. It was the way she sang. Barry looked on admiringly as the bar grew silent. Both of the Liliths on stage were singing beautifully, and the rest of the bar was silent in reverent respect to the small creature. Both of them? He shook his head dizzily, feeling the affects of the alchoholic beverages he had consumed previously hit him like a brick wall.

The blonde girl knew just when to let her voice warble, and just when to rise to a smooth climax, and just when to sputter down into a low humming tune, her voice so quiet that every ear strained to catch the soft notes carried by the breeze let in through the open window. Betty's blue eyes sparkled with pride from across the room, and when Lilith finished, executing a short, ackward bow-curtsey, there was a shocked silence.

Irritated, the blonde child prepared to shove her way through the mass of people. They made way for her, the crowd parting like the Red sea before Moses. One person began to clap, and another. Soon, the saloon was in an uproar, whistles and applause filled the air. Lilith, full of pride, skipped the rest of the way over to Betty, whose gaze (like that of everyone else in the bar) was fixed adoringly on her. Betty seemed to say, 'You did well, Lil'-chan! You did very well!'

And Lilith knew she had done well, especially when she felt a pair of muscular arms around her wasp-like waist. Her ruby eyes flickered a deadly maroon shade and she turned to fix them upon a pair of dull, nut-brown ones. A tall man, with sandy-blonde hair, wearing an expensive black tuxedo. Barry exchanged glances with Sal; they both knew that it was unlikely Lilith would accept the invitation to sleep with the older man. It had happened several times before, and each time the terrified girl would cast a pleading glance in Barry or Sal's direction, begging them for assistance. Sal, like a defensive mother hen, was always ready to peck the teen's suitor's eyes out. She was preparing to, too, rolling up the sleeves of her blouse Sal was as fiercely defensive of her Lil'. Even though they were on the opposite side of the bar, both Barry and Sal were ready to hurdle the masses in order to rescue their nightly double-dollar-doner. Then, Barry noticed something peculiar.

Barry grasped his wife's arm. "Sal." he said lowly.

Sal glanced at him sharply, "What, Bar', what?"

"...Not this time," the saloon-owner said softly, watching as Lilith allowed herself to be led towards the stairs of the Knuckle n' Foot, the stairs.

Sal couldn't believe her eyes. Lilith knew as well as anyone that those stairs led to the rooms the prostitutes used. Could it be true? Sal sighed, then froze. Betty was staring at her, the doll's creepy blue eyes boring into the woman's soul. The woman could have sworn that the headless toy was insisting that she do something... But what? She approached the bar hesitantly, reaching out to touch the side of the doll's cold porcelain face. She lifted the head, then the limp cloth body with its tattered pink dress. Never before had Sal felt such a strong sense of life in a toy.

Barry, meanwhile, smirked. Lilith would surely give him a portion of the pay she would recieve from the man with the sandy-blonde hair. Perhaps, Lilith would become one of the daily prostitutes that came to the Knuckle n' Foot. Some perverted people loved to rape young children, and Lilith's attitude was childish enough that she could get away with it nicely. Shame consumed him. Greed overtook the shame. Shame swamped the greed. As these two emotions battled, Barry wondered how he could allow the child to do this.

Sal ignored the puzzled expression on her husband's face as she took up the broken doll and headed to the back room. She pattered down the stairs to the cellar. There, she found a needle and some thread. She worked long into the night, ignoring the faint cries of pain from the room above the cellar.

(Chapter Two, 'Haunting Eyes' will feature a lot more of Midvalley, and possibly will introduce either:

a.) Legato

b.) Wolfwood.

You can tell me which of the two you'd like to see in the comments, I think. I'm rather new to this, but I don't mind if you choose not to comment. If you do, though, I'll mention your name in the next chapter, plus your suggestion or comment. Ain't I sweet?)


End file.
